Are You With Us or What? - EP breakdown.

Title: Daftmash
Released: 11/7/2009(http://8bitcollective.com/music/godinpants/daftmash/)
Platform: LSDJ
Notes: This track started off as a bit of fun for a friend. It's a mash up of a few daft punk songs including, Robot Rock, Aerodynamic, Da Funk and Television.
Later when performing this song live, I made use of LSDJ's speech synthesis to emulate the robotic vocoder sounds used by Daft Punk.
To make all the parts fit together, I transposed them all to the key of D.
This track features some really good combinations of wave and pulse channel a fifth apart, to create a nice thick distorted guitar like sound.

Title: Sunchaser
Released: 25/5/2009 (http://8bitcollective.com/music/godinpants/sun-chaser/)
Platform: LSDJ
Notes: This track is one that I don't listen to much, the high arpeggio sounds very brittle and harsh, despite using a 50% pulse wave. Structurally there is not much to this song, and the arpeggio is too overpowering of all the other sounds.
The noise channel work in this track is also a bit disappointing, it lacks definition between instruments and falls into the background.

Title: Unemployed Astronaut(originally released as "Incomplete Life Goals")
Released: 24/6/2009 (http://8bitcollective.com/music/godinpants/Incomplete+Life+Goals/)
Platform: LSDJ
Notes: This is one of my favourite tracks from this particular release. It starts off with droning chordal sounds, which developed from something I wrote on guitar. As I moved this song from guitar to LSDJ I had to re-write it to fit the limitations. Because of this, I wrote the arpeggio to come in on the weakest part of the chord, so that the general sound remains.
Some criticisms against this track would be that I feel like the kick in the recording is a bit harsh(though this was fixed in the track on my gameboy). Also the pseudo-side chained bass line is not loud enough.
This effect was obtained by writing the bassline and kick pattern in the same channel, leaving me with the 2 pulse channels free for the bouncy arpeggio and droning lead.
It can be difficult to bring all the levels equal in LSDJ, though the simplest solution would be to record each channel seperately, the improvisational nature of my work makes this difficult.
Overall however I quite like the way this track turned out.

Title: Mediocrit(Originally named "Striving for Mediocrity")
Released: 20/05/2009(http://8bitcollective.com/music/godinpants/Striving+for+Sonic+Mediocrity./)
Platform: LSDJ
Notes: When recording this track, I wanted to get more out of the sample kits I was using for drums.
So I split wave and noise tracks left, and everything else right(I've used this on a few other tracks, as most of my LSDJ music is simply mono). This meant I could apply different EQ and effects to both parts. The result is the very defined drum track, while the pulse channels remained clean.
This track features some early attempts with noise channel work, as well as the gameboy's speech synthesis, speaking "godinpants" towards the end of the track.

Title: Prosthetic Whale
Released: 22/07/09(http://8bitcollective.com/music/godinpants/Prosthetic+Whale%28the+desert+crawl%29/)
Platform: Nanoloop 1.3
Notes: The first of my underclocked recordings.
This track was something I put together quickly in Nanoloop, comprised mostly of older song parts I had left unused when moving across to LSDJ.
I feel it showcases the pitch depth that is available with an underclocked DMG.
From the low, thick bass, to the high, chiming sounds.
There are two tracks in this recording, the second being identical to the first, but with distortion, this track was lowered in the mix, so as to preserve the bass of the first.
While showcasing the good side of underclocking, it also showcases the "worse" side. As referenced in the track's subtitle(desert crawl), the gameboy is brought almost to a crawling speed when underclocked, creating many more limitations of what can be produced with it.

Title: Are You With Us or What?
Released: 16/08/09(http://8bitcollective.com/music/godinpants/Are+You+With+Us+or+What/)
Platform: LSDJ/Axiome(puredata software for running with the Monome interface)
http://www.monome.org
http://www.lsxdesign.net/Puredata/Axiome/
Notes: Another underclocked track, although this time, frustrated with the continual crashing of my gameboy, I recorded some simple parts onto my computer, where I cut them into short loops for use with Axiome and my recently built Monome.
This track is one of my favourites to play, because it requires the most from me, and allows the most improvisation, which also creates the most potential for things to go wrong.
Having the ability to cut breaks live along with my gameboys was one of the reasons I built an arduinoboy, which was later replaced with a midi>gb.
Although this track feels more like a more organised return to the Lunchbreaks style.
The recording I used on the EP was only my second attempt at playing the song.

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All up I was quite happy with how this EP turned out, although retrospectively I feel that Sunchaser and Prosthetic Whale are fairly weak in comparison.
However I was intending to release and print copies before my appearance at the band comp, which was later moved.
Had I known it would be, the two tracks would have been replaced with newer, better ones.